Conventional paper systems such as day planners provide log sheets that allow a person to manually track almost any data item the person desires, such as the number of pages the person read in a book for a given day, the person's weight, blood pressure, cholesterol or exercise repetitions (i.e., number of push ups, sit ups, etc.) But these conventional paper systems require that the person manually calculate the performance of the data item for a given period. Thus, the log sheets are typically inconvenient, time consuming, and often difficult to maintain.
Conventional computerized tracking systems such as personal digital assistants, allow for specific predefined data items to be tracked. For example, conventional computerized tracking systems may have a financial tracking program or a diet tracking program, but these systems only allow a person to keep a record of the person's performance in the respective area (e.g., finance or diet). There are also conventional computerized tracking systems that allow the user to create items to be tracked, but these conventional computerized tracking systems limit the type of data that can be collected typically to averages. Furthermore, these conventional systems do not use days as the basic unit of entry, nor do they allow a user to set performance goals in association with the data item. Thus, there is a need for a performance tracking system that allows a user to track any type of data item, instead of being limited to tracking items defined by the tracking system. In addition, there is a need for a performance tracking system that allows a user to track unrelated data items simultaneously, such as tracking the number of sales calls made by a user, a user's weight on average, or whether a user has worked out on a given day.